You'd think that would be a lot of time to come up with material. But you would be wrong. I haven't thought much about my pet movie project. It's been one thing after another. But now, we all have a lot more time to tap into our creative side between hand washing, hydrating, remote conference calls, and figuring out how to acquire toilet paper and bread.
So, with that, I bring you my first Gen X Movie review of 2020.
3. Straight Outta Compton (2015)
What could be more Gen X than the advent of gangsta rap, the east coast/west coast rivalry, and how much it all terrified suburban white parents around us while we were growing up? This is a story that needed to be committed to the big screen.
When the song 'Boyz-n-the-Hood' first hit the airwaves, the entire country was introduced to a cocky, foul mouthed, high pitched mouthy shit talker named Eazy-E, and people couldn't get enough of him. It was even more notable for how much it was catching on in the suburbs. The song was obnoxious, derogatory, violent, misogynistic, and damn proud of it. It was also catchy as hell, and I played it non-stop. Parents were furious, the media clutched their pearls, and the music industry immediately started combing the inner city for more talent that could sell records.
This was only the beginning. Fans know Eazy-E was the stage name for Eric Wright, and while Boyz was a solo performance, fans also know it was written by O'Shea Jackson, much better known as Ice Cube. The beat and production quality was also surprisingly good thanks to Andre Young, much better known as Dr. Dre. The three of them were a creative force that complimented each other so well, that it was lightning in a bottle. And as powerful as lightning is, we also know that it's gone before you realize it happened or knew how big the boom would be.
By the time Eazy-E's solo work had blown up, the trio had teamed up with Lorenzo Patterson (MC Ren) and Antoine Carraby (DJ Yella) to form the core of NWA. Eazy-E had the cash and street smarts to pull the thing together. Ice Cube was a lyrical mastermind, and Dr. Dre knew the right rhythms, samples, and mixes and production know-how to get under your skin. Together they had the engine, brains, and wheels to make this thing move very fast.
The story of how they came together, conquered the music scene, and fell apart and the role that their middle aged Jewish manager Jerry Heller played in all of this needs to be told, because so many people had never imagined something like this hitting the top of the music charts:
Who were these guys? Were they for real with this? Were they playing? You'll get some insights from the movie for sure. You might even think the movie answers those questions. For first hand insight into those questions, I looked to Jerry Heller himself. What he revealed in his book 'Ruthless', which chronicles his life but also delves deeply into his time managing NWA made me watch this movie with an even deeper understanding of not just what the answers were, but WHY those are the answers to the questions.
In 'Ruthless', Heller writes:
"I think I know that the whole "dope dealer" tag was part of Eric Wright's self-forged armor. The hood where he grew up was a dangerous place. He was a small guy. "Thug" was a role that was widely understood on the street; it gave you a certain level of protection in the sense that people hesitated to fuck with you...no one survived on the streets without a protective mask. You had to have a role. You had to be a "thug," "playa," "athlete," "gangsta," or "dope man." Otherwise there was only one role left to you. "Victim."
Heller goes on later to say:
"the lives described in Straight Outta Compton (referring to the album, not the movie) are those of Michael Concepcion, Freeway Rick, Monster Cody, Tookie Williams, and Harry O, all legendary South Central gangsters of the seventies and eighties. Eazy had been hearing stories of thes drug-dealing desperadoes all his life. The twentysomething artists of NWA inhabited the roles of real-life grown-up desperadoes."
If Heller is accurate about this, it paints a scene like this one from the movie in a whole different light:
"Our art is a reflection of our reality."
And whether these guys were real gangsters or not is the wrong question. It was a part of who they were just like the weather is a part of who we are on any given day. And if the forecast is always stormy, than does it really matter if you are the storm or if you're trying to survive the storm? The cause and the effect become one in the same. The movie is also deft at painting a picture of authority as equally as threatening as any thug in their community. In some ways, they saw them as more dangerous because authority had the weight of the government to lend legitimacy and credibility to the abuse they might suffer.
Success and money can ultimately be the undoing of any great creative force if ambition is unchecked. That's how the rapid demise of NWA is portrayed in Straight Outta Compton. And that's the hardest lesson for anyone from any background to learn. But that lesson is delivered with powerful subtlety, like the elephant that is always in the room but never discussed.
The story takes me back to a different time, but one that definitely left its mark on the music scene. There was rap music before NWA, and rap music after NWA. The before was not as good, and everything after is something the folks from my generation might see as something that wouldn't exist the way it does at all had NWA never happened. The story in Straight Outta Compton transcends hip-hop, rap, even music in general. It shines a bright spot light on the questions America still doesn't know how to answer, and can't decide if it wants to try.
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Not what you were expecting from the guy who awarded Amadeus a win eh? Like Luke Skywalker once said: "You'll find I'm full of surprises!" No I'm not giving anything away about a future post. Forget I said anything. Moving right along to my first runner up.
2. Chernobyl (2019 HBO Miniseries)
I only had to go back one year for this one. Gen Xers ranged from about kindergarten to celebrating their 21st birthday when something happened in the modern day Ukraine that altered the course of history for our lifetime. It was our generation's Kennedy assassination, but most of us didn't know it at the time and still probably don't think of it that way today. But I do now. And I'll get to why in just a little bit.
Boomers are able to tell you exactly where they were when they heard the news about JFK. Millennials can say the same thing about 9/11. As I write this, my Gen Z daughters are sheltering in place to slow the spread of the Coronavirus. They will never forget 2020 as a year that altered how they viewed and approached life. But in typical Gen X fashion, the moment that altered our lives to this very day occurred under the radar, and gets very little credit for being that thing.
We grew up in an era where it seemed like a single day couldn't go by without thinking about the Soviet Union. We had enough nukes to destroy the world, they had enough nukes to destroy the world. The magazine cover below is iconic. Tucked away in the upper right hand corner is our President, one of two men in the world with the ability to set things in motion that would mutually assure destruction of our country and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (also known by hockey fans as CCCP).
Seems like a big deal. Also, when he was on TV, he was on every channel we had. Not just every news channel.....Every. Single. Channel. And he spent a lot of time talking about our comrades to the east.
Our culture followed suit. When we went to the movies, we watched Red Dawn, War Games, and The Hunt For Red October. Sting implored us to believe him through our radios when he sang to us that he hoped the Russians loved their children too. Then Billy Joel came on and sang the lyric "cold war kids are hard to kill, under their desk in an air raid drill." When we watched the Olympics, the the headlines were about whether or not we were beating the Soviets in any event. Silver medals were victories if it meant your flag still hung a little higher than the sickle and hammer. And who in their right minds ever thinks a movie like Rocky IV would ever get made if the Soviets didn't dominate our national conscience?
For my entire memorable childhood, I believed we would exist in this perpetual stalemate for the rest of our lives because it seemed like the only way to end it was unconscionable and terrifying.
Turns out that what ended it was a safety test on RBMK reactor 4 on the evening of April 26, 1986. What happened after that? All Hell broke loose. Literally. But nobody knew about it, and the Soviet government was determined to keep it that way. What happened in the days and months that followed is tragically heroic and deeply heartbreaking, especially when we learn of the sacrifices many knowingly made to make sure that it didn't end up being 100 times worse than it was. And finally, we know their stories.
The USSR was a great country. It was a superior country. Not because it was actually those things, but because their propaganda told everyone that it was. Sure we had rockets, but they had better rockets that got to space first. We had Olympic athletes, but they had superior Olympic athletes. If we beat them, it was because something was rigged because nobody could actually beat the superior Soviet power. And we had nuclear power, but nothing in the world could compare to the superior nuclear power that the Soviets had engineered. A catastrophic failure of a Soviet nuclear reactor was not possible, and the spread of deadly radioactive isotopes beyond their borders was not possible. And so we would not be told anything about that happening because it couldn't happen.
A scene where we are introduced to a group of Soviet coal miners cutting up in a break room has their foreman blasting through all of that propaganda with one quick joke:
"What's as big as a house, burns 20 liters of fuel every hour, puts out a shit-load of smoke and noise, and cuts an apple into three pieces?"
Answer? "A Soviet machine made to cut apples into four pieces."
The men all laugh, and we know that a joke is funny because there is truth in it. The scene serves as a metaphor for the entire Soviet Union, a big inefficient machine, built sub-standard that doesn't accomplish what it was designed to do. That is the nation that built the Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Nuclear Power plant just outside the city of Chernobyl. When corners were cut and unnecessary risk was taken, the state propaganda machine would fill the void between reality and mythology.
The Chernobyl disaster is still considered the worst environmental disaster in the history of mankind. It led to 42 immediate deaths and was followed by countless thousands of deaths and chronic illness that lingers to this day, and ended up costing the USSR an estimated $68 billion in emergency response, decontamination, and mitigation. Mikhail Gorbachev himself said 20 years later that "The nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl was perhaps the real cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union five years later."
We Gen Xers can't say we know exactly where we were when the USSR collapsed, but now we can finally know the story of how it did. Also, the movie doesn't agree with Mr. Gorbachev about the cause. In a powerful monologue, the movie serves an indictment to the nation:
"When the truth offends, we lie. We lie until we can no longer remember the truth is there. Every lie incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, the truth will come to collect. It always does."
The truth came to collect on April 26, 1986. Now that we know, hopefully we can learn before the truth comes to collect again.
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Epilogue to this post:
I don't have any clips from Chernobyl to share here. They are available, but don't serve this post very well. It is a long and at times very depressing story, but the humanity in each of the characters is well worth seeing and embracing. There are some areas of significant artistic license in Chernobyl unfortunately. It's like there is some sort of Hollywood inability to resist the temptation to make shit up for no good reason whatsoever. There are several good articles that clarify fact from fiction as portrayed in the series. They are well worth reading, and the truth is still shocking and tragically heroic....or heroically tragic. Take your pick. The movie will also educate you on what went wrong when the events are litigated in a trial in the final episode. Since I didn't know they would get to this later, I was concerned during earlier episodes that some things would never make sense to me. But be assured, they will tie it together well. If you want to get a better foundation of understanding, I found this short video to be very good. It's short, sweet and to the point.
Tune in soon for the category winner!!!! It won't depress you, I promise.
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